Philosophy Now Forum

when I was a "Nietzschean" a long time ago and in a different galaxy,
I believed, as people are wonton to do, think that the "will to power"
was a biological, scientific explanation of the universe..
the "will to power" is a psychological theory pretending to be
a biological/scientific theory.. now one might bring up
the animal need to procreate as the "will to power"
but that is instinct, driven into us by a million years of
evolution... but, the "will to power" is distinct, separate from the need
to procreate.. we have mistaken the concept of the "will to power"
as a biological need, and it is in fact a psychological need..
animals don't have a need for power... for in fact, what is power?

my handy dandy dictionary defines power as

Power: the ability to do something or act in a particular way,
especially as a faculty or quality. "the power of speech"

2. the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior
of others in the course of events..

3. political or social authority or control, especially that
exercised by a government... \

definition number one doesn't seem to help us,
but definition 2 and 3 do help us.. power to control
or influence others doesn't help us in regard to animals...
I can't think of an animal that impacts other animals
with specificity implied by definition of 2 or 3...

one might say, what about ''Alpha'' males in the animal
kingdom? That is geared toward procreation, and that is not
universal, adapted by ''all'' biological creatures... some do and
some don't.... for example, do primates, as we are, do all primates
have an ''Alpha'' male? Or do wolves have an Alpha male? for example,
do the Hamadryas baboon have an Alpha male? No...and wolves
don't have an ''Alpha'' male...

thus, it is not a universal trait... and thus is not a biological trait..
the ''WILL to power'' is only for some biological creatures, but not all...
we have mistaken the concept, ''the Will to power'' as some
biological necessity and it isn't...for human beings, ''will to power''
is a psychological need...and not even all human beings engage in
this need for ''power'' it is not universal in humans, thus not
biological...

Kropotkin

You'll never take a piece of writing like this down, keter propotkin. It's timeless and untouchable.

"Suppose nothing else were "given" as real except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down, or up, to any other "reality" besides the reality of our drives--for thinking is merely a relation of these drives to each other: is it not permitted to make the experiment and to ask the question whether this "given" would not be sufficient for also understanding on the basis of this kind of thing the so-called mechanistic (or "material") world?...

In the end not only is it permitted to make this experiment; the conscience of method demands it. Not to assume several kinds of causality until the experiment of making do with a single one has been pushed to its utmost limit (to the point of nonsense, if I may say so)... The question is in the end whether we really recognize the will as efficient, whether we believe in the causality of the will: if we do--and at bottom our faith in this is nothing less than our faith in causality itself--then we have to make the experiment of positing causality of the will hypothetically as the only one. "Will," of course, can affect only "will"--and not "matter" (not "nerves," for example). In short, one has to risk the hypothesis whether will does not affect will wherever "effects" are recognized--and whether all mechanical occurrences are not, insofar as a force is active in them, will force, effects of will.

Suppose, finally, we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one basic form of the will--namely, of the will to power, as my proposition has it... then one would have gained the right to determine all efficient force univocally as--will to power. The world viewed from inside... it would be "will to power" and nothing else."

from Beyond Good and Evil, s.36, Walter Kaufmann transl.

Been there, done the Nietzsche thing. Almost wish I could marshall the "will to" read his writings but it doesn't seem particularly worth it anymore. Haven't been able to read much at all these days. It all sounds like blah, blah, blah, including my own ramblings. Such is life, I guess.